Teach us to Pray.
"Jesus was praying in a certain place..." Of all the Gospel writers, St. Luke shows Jesus praying most often. "Jesus was praying in a certain place...", Luke tells us. And he mentions this multiple times throughout his Gospel. Imagine that. Jesus, the incarnate Second Person of the Holy Trinity, going off alone every day to pray. Why would God himself need to take time away from his pressing activities to pray? This simple fact reveals so much. First, it gives us a glimpse into the life of the Trinity. Remember, the Trinity is three Persons in one Nature. Three real Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with real relationships. Jesus went off to pray because he cared about those relationships, about nourishing them and being nourished by them. Second, in his human nature, our Lord entered into the limits of time and space. His Trinitarian relationships, in some mysterious way, needed to participate in prayer.
We share that same human nature, and we have been made participants in the divine nature through baptism. So, we too can expect that the development of our relationships with the Trinity will require time alone with God. It’s all well and good to say that we are “always praying,” and that is indeed our ideal. But if Jesus himself felt a need to go off to be alone with his Father and the Holy Spirit on a daily basis, why would we ever think that we could make our Christian journey without doing the same? The Catechism (2697) puts it eloquently: “Prayer is the life of the new heart. It ought to animate us at every moment. But we tend to forget him who is our life and our all… we cannot pray ‘at all times’ if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it. These are the special times of Christian prayer, both in intensity and duration.”
"...and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. They had been watching him. They had been traveling with him, seeing how he passed his time. Clearly, prayer was an anchor for the Lord. Clearly, the disciples recognized that their own life of prayer was not at the same level as Christ’s prayer. But they wanted to grow, to improve. They wanted their prayer life to be what it should be. So, they asked the master to teach them. That’s what disciples do: they learn from the master; they thirst for more and seek to grow. How is my thirst? How is my desire to grow, to learn, to follow Jesus more closely?
To be someone’s apprentice means much more than learning some information about something. It is not just a part-time slice of one’s life. To be an apprentice, a disciple, is to learn a whole style of living; it’s a full-time adventure. And since Christ is infinite in his divine wisdom, we will always have more to learn from him. Our full-time adventure of discipleship will never end. We just have to keep nourishing our desire to live more like Jesus, to learn from him, to discover in all the ups and downs of our daily life all the lessons he wants to teach us and all the graces he wants to give us. Then, when we are ready for the everlasting adventure of heaven, he will take us home.
He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name..." The Lord’s Prayer is the perfect prayer and summarizes the entire Gospel (CCC, 2761). The Gospels give us two versions of the Our Father, the basic Christian prayer. The version in Luke, with five petitions, is shorter than that of Matthew, with seven petitions, but the essentials are still there. In the prayer, the Lord teaches us what to ask for from our heavenly Father. The prayer also draws us into the mystery of who the Father is (see CCC, 2779). Praying to the Father deepens our desire to become like him through grace and helps our hearts grow in humility and filial trust (see CCC, 2784-85). The first petition asks that the Father’s name be made holy. This draws us into the mystery of his plan of salvation and our call to holiness (CCC, 2807). Luke’s second petition asks primarily for the final coming of the reign of God (CCC, 2818). The Kingdom has been established by Jesus, is in our midst now, and yet awaits its consummation at the end of time. The third petition asks for the nourishment that our physical and spiritual lives require (CCC, 2830). The fourth petition, in Luke’s version, begs for the gift of God’s mercy. It is a “mercy which can penetrate our hearts only if we have learned to forgive our enemies, with the example and help of Christ” (CCC, 2862). The fifth petition asks the Father to keep us from the path that leads to sin. It also is a request for the grace of vigilance and final perseverance (CCC, 2864).
Of this prayer, Saint Andre Bessette said, “When you say the Our Father, God’s ear is next to your lips.” The great mystical Doctor of the Church Saint Teresa of Ávila gave this advice while praying the Lord’s Prayer: “Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.” And Saint Thérèse of Lisieux said that the “Our Father” prayer was one of the prayers she prayed when she felt so spiritually barren that she could not summon up a single worthwhile thought. How do you pray the Lord's prayer?
Let us Pray.
Lord, I echo the petition of your first disciples: Teach me to pray! I want my life of prayer to be all that you want it to be. I know that prayer is a mystery, that one who prays regularly is always going to find new challenges, new delights, new avenues to discover. Never let me neglect my prayer life. Never let me fall into routine. Never let me stop seeking to go deeper and deeper into the friendship you so generously offer me. Amen
Be blessed.
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